This is one EV charger that may as well have never been installed

Since being installed in 2009, an electric vehicle charging station in Putney in the UK has been used for just five – five! – hours.

According to The Guardian, the station in question – which cost £6,018 ($9,430 U.S. at today's exchange rates) to install – is in the parking lot of the Putney Leisure Centre in Putney. A council spokesman told the newspaper that stations were installed before the cars were available and that, "Usage was always going to be very low in the early years until more affordable models become available and more people switch to this new, greener technology."

Granted, this singular anecdote does not have any real bearing on the plug-in vehicle market in the UK as a whole – other UK chargers were used much, much more, and more stations were installed near the barely used Putney charger this year – but it does show that this line, from The Guardian, remains important: "Some electric car owners are able to charge cars in their own homes overnight reducing their need to use the council charging points while on the go."

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Never been to the UK. But if you look up this location on an aggregator’s site (OpenChargeMap.org), it shows as a level 1 with no use history (questionable operation?). Icon is grey (Out-of-service, restricted?) Service provider is NewRide.org (a major provider?). And; “Electric car users have to register with the council first to use the charging points, and receive a charging cable as well as an electronic key fob”, inconvenient. As in the US market, myriad providers fragment the data available to drivers. I check Blink and ChargePoint here in the US, I don’t always see sites from smaller vendors unless I visit an aggregator site, which may or may not get new site feeds from the proprietary operators. This story asks a valid question, but does nothing to answer it. A site that is invisible, unavailable, and inconvenient will get little use.

I bet you this one is even worse. An EV spot just for people with disabilities. I am all for accessibility but maybe this kind of spot shouldn't have priority. http://twitter.com/toxicpath/status/234326102200438785/photo/1

I _think_ the intent of that spot is that it's for EV charging, but it's ok for it to get ICEd by someone with a handicapped placard. Not sure how the parking enforcement officer would interpret it, though.

The space can be used by anybody; it's not *reserved* for disabled parking only. The sign simply indicates that it can accommodate a vehicle equipped for carrying disabled persons - which generally means it's van accessible and has room for a lift.

"But there do exist shared handicapped and EV charging parking spots." Where did I say that they didn't exist? I pointed out the EV charging space in the photo is ADA compliant, and is labelled as such. Perhaps the local parking authorities have properly instructed their compliance officers in the letter of the law, so that they understand who is and isn't allowed to use the space, eg, non-EV drivers.

Ah... perhaps. But there do exist shared handicapped and EV charging parking spots. http://www.greencarreports.com/image/100396006_handicapped-parking-space-shares-room-with-electric-car-charging-station http://www.miamidade.gov/development/library/reports/ada.pdf "The entire country follows California's ADA policy guidelines for electric vehicle charging stations... So, any of the following can park in the extra-wide, ADA-compliant parking/charging space: 1) Handicapped/disabled drivers of gasoline vehicles (non electric vehicles) 2) Handicapped/disabled drivers of electric vehicles 3) Non-handicapped/non-disabled drivers of electric vehicles. The only people who can't park in that spot are non-handicapped/non-disabled drivers of gasoline vehicles (non electric vehicles). Therefore, the extra-wide, ADA-compliant parking space, according to California policy guidelines, should not have handicapped/disabled signage or pavement markings, because if it did, then the non-handicapped/non-disabled EV driver would get ticketed."